Lord of Prayer

Chapter 474: Chapter 300: Sowing Discord

·

In a lavishly decorated office in the Bear Group Building, Andre was on a call with a high-ranking official from the North Carolina Ministry of Defense.

"Andre, the South is about to become the Salvation Army’s main theater of operations. You’re a big target, so things are going to get very dangerous for you."

"If they dare to come, they’re just asking to die," Andre replied nonchalantly, a testament to his absolute confidence in both his own power and the combat strength of the legion under his command.

The contact from the Ministry of Defense heard the confidence in Andre’s tone and sneered. "Let’s see if you can maintain that arrogance when you run into one of the Salvation Army’s Tier Fours."

"A Tier Four?"

Andre’s expression immediately turned grim. He was confident in his abilities, but that didn’t mean he was arrogant enough to think he could challenge a Tier Four Uncrowned. "A Tier Four from the Salvation Army is going to make a move?"

"There’s about a fifty percent chance. A Tier Four wouldn’t even need three minutes to kill you. If one decides to drop by while passing through, you’re dead. So you’d better pray you don’t get that unlucky."

Andre fell silent. He wasn’t a man who liked to gamble; he preferred to keep everything under his control. To him, a fifty percent chance of danger might as well be a one hundred percent certainty.

His expression darkened. "I’m hiring mercenaries from Omega."

"Impossible. The President has enacted a national lockdown. No outsiders are permitted to set foot in North Carolina."

"So the government wants me dead?" Andre’s gaze grew even darker.

Publicly, the North Carolina Government had only two known Tier Four Ascenders. One was Iron-blooded Colonel Jason, who had left to hunt down the Black-robed Man and had yet to return. The other had vanished years ago, and it wasn’t clear if they were even dead or alive. As for what secrets they kept, no one knew if the North Carolina Government was hiding another Tier Four in the shadows.

If a Tier Four from the Salvation Army truly came to kill him, he would be dead for sure without the protection of a fellow Tier Four Ascender. And in the current climate, the North Carolina Government certainly wouldn’t dispatch one to protect him. The best solution, then, was to hire international mercenaries. With enough money, you could even hire a Crowned King as your enforcer.

But what chilled Andre to the bone was that after all the dirty work he’d done for the North Carolina Government, after contributing so much to the nation’s GDP, the government wouldn’t offer the slightest bit of help now that disaster was looming. They wouldn’t even make a single exception for him.

’Aren’t they just leaving me to die?’

The contact’s casual voice drifted over the line. "Andre, why do you always seem to forget your place? If we hadn’t stepped in back then, you would’ve been killed by those little shits from the White House years ago. We didn’t just save your life; we let you rule the southern underworld. We even cleaned up your identity and helped you build your corporation into a powerhouse. You should think long and hard... without us, would there even be an ’Andre’ today?

"Let me put it bluntly, even though you won’t like hearing it. North Carolina wouldn’t suffer any real loss without you. At worst, Bear City and the southern underworld would be chaotic for a few days. But we could prop up a new puppet to take your place in less than a week. And you... you would just be gradually forgotten.

"You’re really not as important as you think you are, you know?"

Andre lowered his gaze. He casually picked up a string of expensive Buddha Beads from the desk and began to roll them in his hand. "So, I’m being cast aside?"

"No, no, no," the contact said. "We just want you to understand your place. You’re in no position to bargain with us. You’re just a puppet we put in power."

Andre took a deep breath, suppressing the urge to crush the man’s skull, and kept his voice as calm as possible. "What do you want me to do?"

"Stop the Salvation Army."

"How am I supposed to stop them when I don’t even know where they are or what they look like?"

"You won’t have to look for them. They’ll come to you," the contact reminded him. "Deep down, you know why."

’The Nanometer Soldiers...’ Andre knew perfectly well why he was such a prominent target. Aside from his own power, it was because of the two hundred loyal Nanometer Soldiers under his command.

"And what if the one who comes for me is the Salvation Army’s Tier Four?" They were talking in circles, always coming back to this. What Andre feared most was a Tier Four showing up on his doorstep. In that case, he wouldn’t even have a chance to struggle.

"You don’t need to worry about that. We’re also worried their Tier Four might go door-to-door, picking us off one by one. Naturally, we will have countermeasures in place. You just worry about your own part.

"The Bear City Government will cooperate with you. Between your private army and the local garrison, it will be impossible to take Bear City unless the Salvation Army sends two entire regiments."

Andre remained silent for a long time before finally answering in a low voice, "I understand."

After hanging up, he exhaled slowly, watching the neon-lit city through the floor-to-ceiling windows. His eyes flickered with some unknowable thought.

·

At the Bear City Police Department, the atmosphere was like the calm before a storm—a silence so oppressive it was almost suffocating.

Tonight, a police officer had shot and killed an employee of the Bear Group.

In the Bear City Police Department, this was an absolute taboo.

Two years ago, an officer had accidentally shot a Bear Group employee. The victim was just a janitor who cleaned toilets, but the Bear Group retaliated all the same. They took the officer’s wife and two children, violated them in turns until they died, and then flayed their skin. They sewed the skin onto the officer’s body and paraded him through the city for an entire day. That day, the whole city heard the officer’s agonized, despairing screams.

As expected, the officer began to corrupt, but he was immediately gunned down by the well-prepared Bear Group, doused in gasoline, and burned to ash. There was no dramatic turn to the dark side for revenge after his family’s murder. The entire family simply died in the most horrific way imaginable.